Chapter 19
Fiona got to Harbor Brew first. That part mattered. She wanted the table by the window, the one with a clear line to the door, and she wanted to be the one already sitting when he walked in. Let him cross the room to her this time.
She set her bag on the chair beside her. So no one could take the seat. So Drake couldn't take it, couldn't pull it close and lean in with that low, reasonable voice he saved for talking her out of things.
"Well, look who's out before the lunch crowd." Jan came around the counter with a rag over one shoulder. "Two black coffees, or are we waiting on a guest?"
"Just one for now. I'm meeting someone."
Jan's eyebrows went up. "Someone."
"It's nothing exciting."
"Honey, around here, someone is always a little exciting." But she went and poured the coffee and set it down without making Fiona explain.
The shop smelled like burnt sugar and salt air. Out past the glass the harbor sat smooth under a flat blue sky. She wrapped both hands around the warm mug. She didn't drink. She watched the door.
She'd practiced this. Not the words. She wasn't going to recite anything. She'd just decided how she wanted to feel walking out of here, and worked backward from that. Calm. Done. A woman who'd read the last page and closed the book.
The bell over the door jingled.
And there he was. In another pressed blue shirt because so many people told him that shade of blue brought out the blue in his eyes and he loved that.
His sleeves were rolled just so, like he'd dressed for a photograph of a man being casual.
He spotted her and his whole face opened up, warm and sure.
It was the look that used to undo her in a hotel lobby.
The look that worked across a crowded room full of people who mattered.
It didn't undo her now. She noticed that the way she'd notice a clue. Filed it away.
"Fee." He slid into the chair across from her. "Thank you for this. Really. I know I sprang all this on you."
"Sit down. You're already sitting." She nudged the second mug she hadn't ordered him toward the middle of the table. "Jan'll come take your order. Coffee's good here."
"I'm fine. I don't need anything." He folded his hands on the table, earnest. "I've been thinking about everything I said last night. I owe you a real conversation."
"I know why you're here."
He paused. Just a flicker. A man recalculating. "I told you why I'm here. I made a mistake. The biggest one of my whole life."
"Drake." She kept her voice low and even.
No heat in it. She'd been very clear with herself about that.
No scene. No raised voice for the Harbor Ladies Club—who Jan insisted the town referred to as the Harbor Hens—to chew on by suppertime.
"I want to tell you something, and I want you to actually hear it. Can you do that?"
His jaw set, just slightly. "Of course."
Behind the counter, Jan had gone quiet. Fiona could feel it without looking. The chatter dialed down a notch. Jan suddenly had a great deal of careful wiping to do on a stretch of counter that Fiona was certain was already clean.
"The news broke on Monday," Fiona said. "About the deal. My name, the real numbers, all over the industry. It was everywhere by Tuesday." She watched him. "And you showed up on my porch Wednesday. Two days later."
"I don't know what that's supposed to prove."
"You came across the country, Drake. Three states.
To a town you'd never heard of, to a cottage you had to talk an old woman into pointing you toward.
" She turned her mug and picked up a spoon.
Set it down. "And you got here two days after my name turned into a dollar figure.
After half a year of nothing. Not a call. Not a text. Not on my birthday."
Color climbed up from his collar. "You think I had your birthday circled and chose to ignore it?"
"I think you didn't think about me at all until it became profitable to." She said it the way she'd write a line she knew was true. "You came back because I'm worth something again."
There it was. Sitting on the table between them.
For a moment he just looked at her. And she watched it happen, the part she'd known was coming, the part she'd half hoped wouldn't. The denial gathered itself in his face. The wounded husband. The wronged man.
"That's a terrible thing to say." His voice dropped, hurt and soft. "After twenty years. You really think I'd do that?"
"Yes."
"I missed you, Fee. I lay awake missing you. The house was wrong without you in it. I'd reach over and the bed was cold."
"You had someone else in the house." Quiet, even voice. "Someone present. Your word, not mine. You found her present. You found me lacking. You said so to my face, then you put it all in writing and signed it."
His hands came apart on the table. "People make mistakes. That's the whole point of me being here. I'm trying to fix the worst mistake of my life and you're sitting there building a case against me like one of your little books."
There it was. The other tell. Your little books. He hadn't read a word of any of them in fifteen years. Hadn't needed to. The byline was a man's anyway, and the man wasn't real, and the woman who wrote them topped up the wineglasses while Drake held the table.
"They're not little." She didn't raise her voice. She almost smiled. "They never were. You just never bothered to look."
Jan drifted over with the pot, eyes flicking between the two of them, reading the table the way everyone in this town could read a table. "Top you off, hon? Sir, you sure I can't get you anything?"
"He's fine," Fiona said. "We're almost done."
Drake gave Jan the smile, the one for waitresses, assistants, and anyone holding a pot of something he wanted. "Thank you. We're good."
Jan filled Fiona's mug to the brim, gave Drake one more long, flat look, and went back behind the counter.
She didn't go far. Fiona caught her settling in near the register with her rag, close enough to hear a raised voice if one came.
It wasn't going to come. But it was kind, that hovering, watching out for her without being asked.
Drake leaned in, lowering his voice now that the audience had moved out of listening range. "Can we not do this in a coffee shop? Come back to the inn. Let me actually talk to you. Privately."
"No." The word came easy. "This is exactly where I want to do this. Out here. In the coffee shop. Where I can see your face."
"You're being unfair." The earnestness was wearing thin, the patience underneath starting to show. "You've decided I'm the villain in some story and you're not even letting me defend myself. The money's got nothing to do with this. The money is beside the point, Fee. I don't care about the money."
"Okay." She nodded slowly, like she was considering it. Like she was actually considering it. And maybe a small foolish corner of her wanted to. She let that corner sit there a second, then she let it go. "Let's say that's true. Let's say the money's beside the point."
"It is."
"Then where were you in March?"
He stopped.
"You left in February. The papers went through quickly, you wanted them to.
So where were you in March, Drake? When I had nothing.
No name in any headline, no fortune, no deal.
Just me, in a half-empty townhouse, packing my books into boxes.
" She kept her hands around the mug, steady.
"If the money's beside the point, you'd have come back six months ago.
You'd have come back when there was nothing in it for you but me. "
The silence stretched. Out past the window a pelican dropped out of the sky and hit the water and came up with nothing.
Drake didn't have a quick reply for that. She watched him search for it and come up empty, the same as the bird. There was no answer that wasn't the truth, and the truth was sitting in the chair across from him drinking black coffee and not blinking.
"You've changed," he said finally. Like an accusation. Like she'd broken a rule.
"I have." She felt the quiet pleasure of it go all the way through her. "Imagine that."
"This isn't you." He spread his hands, reasonable again, reaching for the version of her he knew how to manage. "The Fee I know doesn't sit in a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere talking to me like I'm a stranger off the street."
"Maybe you never knew her." She looked directly at him. "Maybe you knew the part that poured your wine and laughed at the right times. That part's gone. I left her in a townhouse in Georgetown with the boxes."
He sat back. His mouth did the thing it did when a deal went sideways.
His jaw tightened. The charm drained right out of him.
The charm wasn't working, and a man only used his charm when it paid off.
For one ugly second she saw the whole of him clearly, the way a person finally sees a magic trick once somebody points out the wire.
"I came a long way," he said.
"You did. I'm sorry it didn't go how you planned." And she found that she did mean the apology, a little, the way you could be sorry for a stranger's wasted afternoon. "You should probably head back. Not waste any more of your time."
He stood. He reached to button a jacket he wasn't wearing, caught himself doing it to air, smoothed the front of the pressed blue shirt instead. "If you change your mind—"
"I won't."
"You might."
"Drake." She looked up at him. "Go home."
He went. The bell jingled. Through the glass she watched him cross the street to a rental car that gleamed too new for this town. She kept watching while he pulled out. The car got small down the road, then it was gone past the marina.
She didn't feel triumphant. She'd half expected to. She'd built up this whole idea of having a calm afternoon around the idea of feeling at peace at the end of it.
What she felt instead was tired. It was a good tired, though. Like the tired after a long trip, or the tired after finishing a project that had been hanging there for way too long.
The coffee had gone lukewarm. She drank it anyway, both hands still wrapped around the mug. A boat bobbed in the harbor. The Harbor Ladies Club sitting at the corner table had given up pretending not to look and gone back to their muffins.
Jan appeared at her elbow with the pot. She refilled the mug without asking. Hot over cold, steam curling up fresh.
"On the house," Jan said. "That one's on me."
"You didn't have to do that."
"I know I didn't." She tucked the pot against her hip. "Some folks you pour for and some folks you'd like to pour over their head. He was the second kind." A beat. "You okay, hon?"
And the old answer rose up automatic, the one she'd handed everyone for half a year. Fine. I'm fine. It sat right there on her tongue, smooth as ever.
Fiona didn't say it.
"I'm getting there," she said instead. Which was true. "Thank you, Jan. For the coffee. For hanging around the register."
Jan's face softened. "It was nothing."
"It was, though."
Fiona drank the fresh coffee while it was hot.
She left a tip on the table that was far too much for a cup of coffee and she didn't let herself reconsider it.
The woman had stood guard. That was worth more than a fair tip.
She placed the bills under the empty saucer so the fan over the counter wouldn't take them, picked up her bag, and went out into the bright sunshine.
She headed back to her cottage, walking slowly, enjoying the day. She decided to walk along the beach and watch the waves roll slowly to shore, ever constant, dependable.
A gull tracked her down the beach, hopeful, then gave up and lifted off over the water.
Fiona stood a while at the edge with her shoes in her hand and the warm Gulf running over her feet. Then she turned for home, toward the lighthouse and the small cottage that had started to feel like home.